An Evaluation of Interactors' Gaze-to-Object Mapping Performance in 3D Virtual Environments

Abstract: Affordable and relatively accurate eye trackers are becoming more accessible for the mainstream user, consequently opening up new opportunities for utilizing eye gaze in interactive real-time applications. When extending gaze data from an eye tracker into real-time rendered 3D virtual environments, there are often techniques applied to correlate the gaze point to a 3D object. Techniques which can be referred to gaze-to-object mapping (GTOM) methods. One featured GTOM method, region-bound Interactors, provided by the eye tracking company Tobii AB, was extended in this thesis by utilizing a custom G-buffer in order to extract accurate shapes of individual objects in screen space. This adapted method was compared against two methods based on ray casting in a controlled 3D test environment consisting of three types of scenarios with varying conditions. Data was collected from a user study with 31 participants to assess if the Interactors method could be viable in 3D virtual environments. The extended method showed some promising result in relation to the other methods, but further work needs to be done to establish whether the method in question is practical for GTOM in 3D.